With abortion rights advocates riding a wave of favorable public opinion in California, anti-abortion lobbyists and lawmakers are quietly devising a legislative strategy they hope will turn the tables and put the pro-choice side on the spot. The opponents of abortion realize that a majority of Californians, asked in the abstract, favor a woman's right to choose abortion.

The state Supreme Court, hearing a pivotal case from the emerging field of biotechnology, was asked Tuesday to grant medical patients a broad new right to share in profits from the commercial use of their bodily tissues. The lawyer for a leukemia survivor whose cancerous spleen was removed and used in research urged the justices to open the way for a landmark lawsuit that pits a patient's claim over surgically removed organs against the asserted interests of scientific research.

With a stroke of a pen, President Clinton marked the 20th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade on Friday by dismantling a series of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Administration abortion restrictions, only hours after tens of thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators rallied across the street from the White House.

Bob Orth had been a telephone lineman in Santa Rosa for more than 20 years when he started developing symptoms of Parkinson's disease. By the time he had been on the job 30 years, he felt forced to retire "because I wasn't doing the job properly anymore." In retirement, the situation worsened. Parkinson's "plays games with you," he said Wednesday. "Sometimes you are almost normal, other times you are very bad.

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand the ruling of a California court that a hospital patient does not own rights to tissues taken from his body, even if they prove immensely valuable to scientists. The high court action ends a financial threat to the burgeoning field of biotechnology. By genetically altering human cells, medical researchers have been able to produce new treatments for a variety of ailments including cancer, diabetes, hepatitis and ulcers.

A German farmer who received the world's first complete double arm transplant said incredulity gave way to joy when he woke from surgery and saw he had arms again. Karl Merk, 54, lost his arms just below the shoulders in a combine accident six years ago. He told reporters at the Munich University Clinic, "It was really overwhelming when I saw that I had arms again." Merk is recovering well nearly three months after his operation and can perform simple tasks such as opening doors and turning on lights.

Stanford researchers have reported what appears to be the first significant use of monoclonal antibodies to help transplant tissues in animals. Transplant recipients often have trouble incorporating foreign tissues into their bodies, and doctors have had to rely on powerful and often dangerous drugs to keep such patients from rejecting the transplants. If the Stanford discovery eventually helps humans overcome the rejection problem, it would make transplants much safer.

A medical center whose handling of cadavers has come under FBI investigation said Tuesday that it is recalling body parts sent to research institutions around the country, warning they may carry the AIDS virus or other infections. The University of Texas Medical Branch said records kept by a former employee are so poor that there is a chance the parts--including feet, knees and elbows--have been used in tissue transplants. "We deeply regret this has happened.

A unique Cuban treatment for skin disease is luring thousands of patients to Havana as Cuba tries to establish itself as a top medical center for the developing world. Already claiming to have one of the Third World's most advanced medical systems, Cuba is exploring ways to use this expertise to earn vitally needed hard currency amid its worst foreign exchange shortage since the 1959 revolution. To help turn medical advances into monetary dividends, the government established Servimex as a subsidiary of the Cubanacan holding company set up in 1987 to generate hard currency by developing tourism and joint ventures, a novelty in socialist Cuba.

Scientists reported Monday that they had found a way to identify master cells in the brains of mice and grow them in large batches -- a potential way to help patients grow their own brain tissue transplants. The scientists, writing in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said they found a process to make the cells multiply, which would be crucial in fighting degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson's and Huntington's.